When you say 100k paper loss today, I’m assuming that means that today specifically you lost that much. Assuming you were 100% equities you should have only lost about 3% today, meaning you have a 3 million + portfolio? Are you invested heavily in individual stocks or do you just have a large equity heavy portfolio?

Still enough time to go to cash with Ally for your fixed income portion. I just did this with my taxable account for the required two months and would still be keeping it all in equities if the Ally offer were not tempting. I don't consider this market timing, just luck!

When you say 100k paper loss today, I’m assuming that means that today specifically you lost that much. Assuming you were 100% equities you should have only lost about 3% today, meaning you have a 3 million + portfolio? Are you invested heavily in individual stocks or do you just have a large equity heavy portfolio?

my thoughts exactly. if you are worried when the market falls 3% then you obviously are taking too much risk. But what is the appropriate amount then? Because even if you are a conservative investor with say 30% in stocks you can see a 6%+ drop during a bear market (i.e. a 20% drop X 30% equities = a 6% loss).

"May you live as long as you want and never want as long as you live" -- Irish Blessing |
"Invest we must" -- Jack Bogle

It honestly depends on your spacific timeframe. I am a relatively young 33 only been in the investing game 10 years. With that said for me I keep my perspective and focus on the long-game. Downturns and dollar cost averaging is my frend. I say let's keep this going the more down days the better.

In all seriousness markets go up and down, it takes time to adjust to that but you must, to really make good investmens and money. We've been in a bull market for 9-10 years a little volitilty is expected and in my opinion welcome

Best thing you could do is look at your asset allocation and adjust as necessary based on your reaction to the last few weeks. Hard to tell if this is the start of a 50%+ drop or a minor correction. Make sure you're positioned for either.

Best thing you could do is look at your asset allocation and adjust as necessary based on your reaction to the last few weeks. Hard to tell if this is the start of a 50%+ drop or a minor correction. Make sure you're positioned for either.

I will stay the course and tune out the noise. But I admit, that I have less enthusiasm for investing into my taxable account. Don’t care about my tax deferred inves,nets as much, Maybe better to spend more than taxable? Seems like when the market is going down, it’s like throwing your money into the garbage disposal. But in the back of my mind I know that this is a better time to buy than earlier in the year. I’m hoping in the next 10 years it will work out.

Best thing you could do is look at your asset allocation and adjust as necessary based on your reaction to the last few weeks. Hard to tell if this is the start of a 50%+ drop or a minor correction. Make sure you're positioned for either.

I will stay the course and tune out the noise. But I admit, that I have less enthusiasm for investing into my taxable account.

I truly don't understand this. Wouldn't you be more excited to invest with prices down 8-13%?

Just on my Fidelity account I lost about $35K today. Since early Oct I lost $109K. I had just over $1mill.
That does not include my Vanguard acct that I use for work.

I was aggressive this year and planned to reallocate end of summer to be more diversified. Wanted to meet with an advisor since retirement is 5-10 yrs. Unfortunatly Life got in the way with a very ill family member and didn't pay attention to my portfolio for months…. Now this.. not sure what to do at this point.

Just on my Fidelity account I lost about $35K today. Since early Oct I lost $109K. I had just over $1mill.
That does not include my Vanguard acct that I use for work.

I was aggressive this year and planned to reallocate end of summer to be more diversified. Wanted to meet with an advisor since retirement is 5-10 yrs. Unfortunatly Life got in the way with a very ill family member and didn't pay attention to my portfolio for months…. Now this.. not sure what to do at this point.

Don't fret over it. Markets fluctuate. I'd go ahead and make the AA adjustments you were planning already if I were you.

I'm not sure I'm credentialed to be the defender of "the Philosophy" for "the Organization," but here's my take:

The "Philosophy" of the "Organization" is:

(1) Set an allocation ratio of riskier to less risky assets that meets your risk-tolerance level.
(2) Rebalance when the ratio gets out of whack.

There have been significant recent gains. Rebalancing during the course of those gains would have served to take some off the table.
Rebalancing now (if called for) would take some of those gains and redeploy them into the market.
This is known as selling high and buying low.

Anyone not following this method probably should not be lamenting it. Anyone following this policy and lamenting it because of the last few days probably needs to reassess their allocation ratios. Moreover, they should be thankful that it was only a 3% daily loss that provided them with this very special form of knowledge, namely self-knowledge, that such notables as Socrates and Buddha valued most of all.

Best thing you could do is look at your asset allocation and adjust as necessary based on your reaction to the last few weeks. Hard to tell if this is the start of a 50%+ drop or a minor correction. Make sure you're positioned for either.

I will stay the course and tune out the noise. But I admit, that I have less enthusiasm for investing into my taxable account.

I truly don't understand this. Wouldn't you be more excited to invest with prices down 8-13%?

I think it is a typical investor reaction but is overridden by my years of boglehead experience and knowledge.

Difficult to follow the Philosophy aspired by the Organization after today's dumpster dive even with the appropriate risk reward ratio. $100,000 paper loss today.

If you care about a $100k paper loss in the equity markets on a single day, OP, I highly recommend that you continue to educate yourself and revisit some of the excellent resources on this website re. the (lower-case) philosophy of the BH (no capital-O, "Organization") community. Personally, I'm sure I probably had a healthy 6-figure "paper loss" over the last week. I couldn't care less, due to my circumstance-appropriate AA and strategy. I had similar days in '87/'00/'07. Yawn. Stay the course.

I recognize it's not always easy to follow when the market tanks. For that reason, please review this post from nisiprius.

Nothing in this post constitutes legal or medical advice. |
Consult your attorney or physician to verify if/how anything stated might or might not be applicable to your specific situation.

Best thing you could do is look at your asset allocation and adjust as necessary based on your reaction to the last few weeks. Hard to tell if this is the start of a 50%+ drop or a minor correction. Make sure you're positioned for either.

I will stay the course and tune out the noise. But I admit, that I have less enthusiasm for investing into my taxable account.

I truly don't understand this. Wouldn't you be more excited to invest with prices down 8-13%?

Max SS starts in 18 months. Ten plus years of additional WDs is in bond funds. I suppose that my equities lost in today's market fluctuation, but since the portfolio is not cap weighted, just each fund in the slice and dice portfolio, I may have lost less than someone with more growth exposure, while they would have done much better recently. Risk and reward take turns leading the market.

I just mistyped into "portfoolio." I like that as a new word implying an unsuitable allocation.

Best thing you could do is look at your asset allocation and adjust as necessary based on your reaction to the last few weeks. Hard to tell if this is the start of a 50%+ drop or a minor correction. Make sure you're positioned for either.

I will stay the course and tune out the noise. But I admit, that I have less enthusiasm for investing into my taxable account.

I truly don't understand this. Wouldn't you be more excited to invest with prices down 8-13%?

I think it depends on where you are regarding retirement. 10 yearsago I was 51 and had two opposing reactions. Sold 30k of stocks, but then turned around and upped my 401k contributions to stock funds. Rather bizarre. The stories on the main page of the newspaper really scared me.

Right now I am closely following weekly results, but currently do not have fears for the system. Also at a 50/50 allocation in retirement. No earning new mney to put in. However if the market are still down in january, I’ll be doing roth conversions right away.

Difficult to follow the Philosophy aspired by the Organization after today's dumpster dive even with the appropriate risk reward ratio. $100,000 paper loss today.

If it is difficult, then you have the wrong asset allocation. Markets dropped what, 3%? That's not a real loss.

It's when one has lost 20% (definition of when a correction becomes a bear market), 35% (2000 -03, probably), 50% (2008-09). Then, it really will feel like a loss. I've never had to survive a general market crash of 70%+ but those who were investing in the UK in the mid 1970s had precisely that.

That's true whether you lose 10k of a 30k portfolio, or 100k of a 300k, or 1m of 3m. In my case, it was more or less to lose 90% of say $1m portfolio (employer's stock in the dot com crash).

Hard to tell if this is the start of a 50%+ drop or a minor correction. Make sure you're positioned for either.

There have been only two bear markets with US stock market declines (as measured by the S&P500) in excess of 50% ('29-'32 down 86% and '07-'09 down 56%). One would have to have an incredibly pessimist outlook to think we could be on the precipice of another 50%+ decline.

BTW, not suggesting you are saying that is likely or possible, just that declines of that magnitude are more like black swan events.

Could this turn into a bear market, with a decline in excess of 20%, absolutely possible and would not discount it (especially given the approach of the current US administration to trade negotiations).

I check the market for TLH opportunities. Until last week, I hadn't had any since 2016. I TLH'd last week and again yesterday. No need to rebalance because I am still within my bands. I was excited to TLH since I am living off my assets now and happy to bank some tax loss carry forwards to use against future capital gains I will be cashing in.

P.S. I noticed that my portfolio value decreased more in absolute dollars this month than during the entire last 50% decline because my portfolio is that much larger. That made me smile.

3% is not an especially bad day in stocks. It does rank as one of top 20 worst point declines, but that is only because the market is so much higher today than it was years ago. -7% is required to break the top 20 bad day list, and we have not had one of those in 10 years.

Debt free, house paid off. Honestly not phased one bit. For accumulation stage it's a win-win up or down. Now if I was close to FULL retirement I better have bonds or cash available for a few years of a bear market but I am not at this stage yet.

Hard to tell if this is the start of a 50%+ drop or a minor correction. Make sure you're positioned for either.

There have been only two bear markets with US stock market declines (as measured by the S&P500) in excess of 50% ('29-'32 down 86% and '07-'09 down 56%). One would have to have an incredibly pessimist outlook to think we could be on the precipice of another 50%+ decline.

BTW, not suggesting you are saying that is likely or possible, just that declines of that magnitude are more like black swan events.

Could this turn into a bear market, with a decline in excess of 20%, absolutely possible and would not discount it (especially given the approach of the current US administration to trade negotiations).

It's always 100% possible that one could be underway - is it probable? Probably not, but I've been a fund manager for about 20 years - I never met anyone at the time who thought that 10/9/2007 was going to be the high that we gave back over 50% and retraced back to the 11/6/1996 close.